KING: Trump’s cabinet is the whitest in a generation

We are going back in time. Since the early 90s, each successive presidential administration has had an ever increasing number of African-Americans represented in cabinet-level positions.

President Bill Clinton appointed Mike Espy as Secretary of Agriculture, Ron Brown as Secretary of Commerce, Rodney Slater as Secretary of Transportation, Alexis Herman as Secretary of Labor, and Jesse Brown as Secretary of Veteran Affairs.

Advertisement

No presidential administration had ever appointed as many black folk to cabinet level positions as that of Clinton.

New York Daily News covers of Donald Trump through the years

President George W. Bush, in some respects, improved on what Clinton started. While Clinton appointed one more African-American cabinet member than Bush, they never rose to the highest positions in the cabinet. Under Bush, for the first time in American history, our nation's chief ambassador, the Secretary of State, was an African-American. Bush appointed retired General Colin Powell as his first Secretary of State. When Powell retired, Bush appointed Condoleezza Rice to succeed him and she became the second African-American to ever hold the position.

Bush also appointed Alphonso Jackson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Roderick Paige as Secretary of Education.

President Bush listens to Secretary of State Colin Powell as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice looks on before a speech in 2003. (CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

In addition to President Obama being the first black President of the United States, he appointed the nation's first black Attorney General in Eric Holder. When Holder stepped down, Obama appointed the nation's second black Attorney General in Loretta Lynch.

Furthermore, Obama appointed John King Jr. as Secretary of Education. He also made Jeh Johnson the first African-American Secretary of Homeland Security. Anthony Foxx was made Secretary of Transportation.

President Obama listens as U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch speaks in the White House on Nov. 8, 2014. (Susan Walsh/AP)

And then we have Donald Trump.

We'd literally have to go back to the pre-Internet era, before social media and iPhones, when Trump was married to his first two wives, to find a presidential administration with fewer African-Americans than this incoming Trump administration.

Ben Carson, President-elect Trump's nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), arrives at the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. (ALBIN LOHR-JONES / POOL/EPA)

As it stands right now, Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with no experience in housing, is Trump's lone African-American cabinet member — as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carson has never served in the government before and has never done any work of note with housing. It appears Trump simply appointed him because he knows him and he's black and he didn't want to have an all white administration. In that sense, Carson is a token.

Trump is the first President-elect since the first President Bush to select only white men to the top four cabinet posts of State, Defense, Treasury and Attorney General.

Maybe Trump will appoint other black folk to cabinet positions down the road, but I doubt it. It appears that the other five African-Americans Trump has met with at Trump Towers since being elected would struggle to approved. Kanye's not stable. For that matter, neither are Allen West, who used harsh interrogation techniques while in the military, and recently there was a meme posted on his Facebook account advocating for the extermination of Muslims. David Clarke, who has a long history of making completely foolish and fictitious statements on Fox News, is also not credible to serve in the cabinet. Also, an inmate just died of thirst in his jail. So it's doubtful any of those guys will ever be in Trump's administration.

Advertisement

I guess we will have to hold out for NFL legends Jim Brown and Ray Lewis?